One particular user even claims to have lost his save progress twice as a result of the bug.

"I spent 6 hours non-stop playing last night, and the game froze," he wrote. "Thinking it was no big deal, I turned off my console, and restarted the game. I got a message telling me that my save data was corrupt and not able to be recovered.

"Due to how great I think this new addition to the series is, I took it as a fluke, and started another play-through. Several more hours into the game, I turned off my console, thinking I was going to continue playing the next day. Well, apparently I was mistaken, as I've encountered the exact same issue again (without the game freezing) at the main menu, and still cannot resume any games and I'm forced to start over completely."

Some have suggested that the game may have been saving progress at the time of the crash, thus corrupting the save.

Speaking on the game's official forums, one user claimed to have received an email from Square Enix Support Centre advising them that "if a save is corrupt, there will be no way to recover your current progress".

"To avoid such occurrences in the future," the rep advised, "please try clearing the game data utility before starting the game again."